It’s been three months since Sami Saeed filled out a federal financial aid application. And for three months, the senior at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Md., has waited to fix an error in his form. Somehow, when Saeed’s parents submitted their portion of the application, it was automatically submitted without his signature.
“It did this super annoying thing where it said, ‘Hey, we know your FAFSA was incorrect and everything, but you’re going to have to wait until we get it, review it, process it and send it back until you can fix it,’” Saeed, 18, said. “I was like, ‘Oh, great, I have to wait months to literally add a signature.’”
So as acceptance letters rolled in for him from the University of Maryland in College Park and George Washington University, neither college could tell Saeed how much aid he might receive without a completed financial aid form. It was mid-April before Saeed was finally able to correct and finish his application.
Now, he has trading one waiting period for another — biding his time until financial aid offers arrive.
The Maryland senior’s experience exemplifies the hurdles students are facing this year in completing the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid. A dysfunctional rollout of the updated form — complete with technical glitches, miscalculations and processing delays — has left some students unable to complete it and others weary of applying.
Financial aid can make or break college enrollment for millions of students. And in the shadow of the Supreme Court's rejection last year of race-conscious admissions policies, experts say affordability is even more essential to help diversify campuses. There is a palpable urgency among higher education advocates to get more students through the FAFSA process.
“We’re working very hard to keep our families encouraged at a time when so many of these glitches can have them discouraged, in ways that can perpetuate cycles of poverty,” said Shavar Jeffries, chief executive of the KIPP Foundation, which supports a network of public charter schools. “Many students are remaining resilient in the midst of these challenges, but for some, it’s reinforcing that college is not for them.”
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The stakes are high. Only 30 percent of the high school Class of 2024 has completed a FAFSA, a 36 percent drop compared with this time in the last academic year, according to the latest data from the Education Department.
About 65 percent of schools with a majority of Black and Hispanic students have seen completed FAFSA applications drop by over 36 percent, according to an analysis of federal data for more than 17,000 public high schools that submitted five or more FAFSA applications.
In the Washington region, completions among high school seniors are down 35 percent from the previous year in Maryland, about 33 percent in the District and almost 30 percent in Virginia.
The Education Department is keenly aware of the potential impact of the FAFSA troubles on students’ ability to attend college. The federal agency recently collaborated with parents’ associations, faith-based leaders and community organizations to encourage more students to complete the FAFSA, holding 85 in-person FAFSA workshops nationwide over one week. The department said it received 101,000 new submissions on the first day of the campaign. To date, more than 8 million forms have been submitted and processed.
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“It is all hands on deck here at the department, as it can and should be in every community,” Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten said in an interview. “There are more students qualifying for money and more available money than ever before, so [getting this information out] is more than urgent it’s necessary for the success of students and their future.”
Now that students can correct their applications, Marten hopes completion rates will surge. FAFSA submission rates are about 30 percent higher than completion rates, suggesting students are contending with errors they need to fix. About 16 percent of submissions require a student correction, according to the department.
The department said it has processed more than 800,000 corrections since making the function available in April.
Although students have until June 30 to complete a FAFSA, higher education groups are working to get high school seniors through the process before they graduate and have less support at schools. In some parts of the country, graduation is less than 10 weeks away.
“We’re running out of road,” said Bill DeBaun, senior director of data at the National College Attainment Network. He worries it will take a herculean effort to match the June 30 tally from last year — more than 1 million seniors would need to turn in a form to meet that goal.
And that’s if students can get through the corrections process. College access groups say some students are having trouble pulling up or editing applications they’ve submitted in recent months. The Education Department has identified at least four problems with corrections that it is trying to fix.
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“Like any piece of software, there are still bugs, and we are carefully tracking the issues we see, and we’re sharing what we know, including known workarounds, with the financial aid community so that they can support students through that,” Undersecretary of Education James Kvaal told reporters on April 18.
But those aren't the only remaining hurdles. U.S.-born students whose undocumented parents lack a Social Security number are still having problems completing the financial aid form, despite the Education Department's efforts to resolve glitches.
Now, they must create an FSA ID on the studentaid.gov website and answer a few questions to verify their identity. But when the new form went live in December, undocumented parents were unable to contribute to the form, a function not available until mid-March.
In another glitch, undocumented parents are still unable to pull in tax data from the IRS and must manually enter the information, which increases the chance of mistakes. They’ve also had trouble correcting tax data entered manually. The Education Department said it is aware of these problems but has no timeline for resolutions.
“It’s all so demoralizing,” said Judith “Tessie” Wilson, chair of College Access Fairfax. “Some of these, immigrant families who have come here, came here for this express reason to get their kids to have a better education. And it’s all falling apart in front of them.”
Some families who were shut out of the online application portal turned to paper forms, but that also has led to challenges.
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A high school senior in Northern Virginia, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of her parents’ immigration status, said she mailed the paper form off in late February but has not received any confirmation of whether it was received. Her friends who were able to fill out the application online can quickly check their application status with a few clicks, she said, while she’s stuck waiting.
"It's just hard because they say that this new system that they implemented was going to be easier for students," she said. "But it seems like they just didn't take into account how hard it would be for students that have undocumented parents."
The 17-year-old turned to her counselors at Alexandria City High School for help when her parents were unable to complete the online form. The high school, which serves a diverse population of students, was prepared with paper forms for students with undocumented parents who might face challenges with the federal aid form.
The teen knows she’s in a better position than many other students. She’s already committed to the University of Mary Washington, a school in Fredericksburg, Va., that offered her significant merit-based aid.
But she knows that some of her friends with undocumented parents are stuck waiting and some are now applying to two-year community colleges because they aren't sure what their aid package could look like, or if it will come in time to commit to a more expensive four-year college.
She wants the Education Department to know that students like herself are struggling.
“They just need to focus more on fixing those problems and making the system easier for everyone to access,” she said.
The Education Department recently said it has not begun going through paper applications and is encouraging students to try the online process again.
For Saeed, his aid package will guide which college he chooses to attend. Both College Park and GWU extended their enrollment deadline until May 15, so he has some time.
But in the past few months, he said he has felt “on edge.”
“All those things made it such a confusing process,” Saeed said. “I don’t know if I’m doing the actual right thing or not, and that’s so scary because it’s, like, this is my college on the line here.”